Manila Airport on Alert Following Bomb Scare

The attempted bombing was organized by a group said to be angry at the Philippine government’s position on China.

Philippine authorities arrested three men after police found a Toyota Revo sports utility vehicle loaded with explosives at Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL) on Monday.

It’s believed the detainees also planned to firebomb a major shopping mall and attack the Chinese embassy as well as a building owned by a prominent ethnic-Chinese Filipino, according to Channel NewsAsia.

The explosives at MNL were allegedly found at 1:45 a.m. local time on Monday in the airport’s terminal three car park. Manila’s Sun Star newspaper reported the men were “caught in the act assembling explosive devices inside a parked car.”

The Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) told reporters “gasoline and several suspicious kinds of powders supposedly used in bomb making were also found inside the vehicle,” according to the Sun Star.

Rommel Vallejo, one of the lead investigators, told reporters the “suspects’ plans were unsophisticated” and that the bombs in the vehicle were “plastic bottles containing petrol that the attackers intended to plant at a toilet block.” The fuses were firecrackers allowing only eight seconds to escape.

The plan seemed so amateur that the Philippine military chief general, Gregorio Catapang, called the episode “just comic relief to get attention, it is not a terrorist attack.”

The detained group’s leader has said that he is part of a clandestine organization of police and military figures linked to coup attempts in the 1980s.

Secretary of the Philippine department of justice, Leila de Lima, told reporters on Tuesday that the men allegedly involved with the explosives were seeking publicity for their anti-China grievances, according to Chanel NewsAsia.

The secretary said “the men appeared to be particularly angry at the Philippine government’s perceived soft stance towards China in a long-running dispute over competing territorial claims in the South China Sea.” The three men will be “charged with illegal possession of explosives and conspiracy to commit terrorism.”

MNL is reported to be on “full alert” as a result of Monday’s bomb threat.

[Photo: iStock]